


Portraits

by Mntsnflrs



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: AU, Abandonment, Alternate Universe - Historical, Falling In Love, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Stolen Moments, Tenderness, Unhealthy Relationships, kind of???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:47:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25097110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mntsnflrs/pseuds/Mntsnflrs
Summary: He looked as beautiful as he always had. Maybe a little thinner, maybe a little happier.“Ten,” he said. “Can I help you?”Now that Ten had seen Sicheng, he wished he hadn’t. There he stood, unharmed. His living situation wasn’t ideal, but it was still a damn sight better than what he and Ten had come from. It was better than most people in the city would ever come to know. The apartment, as tall but small as it was, had probably held the greatest of gatherings, the most prestigious of guests.Now it held Sicheng.Sicheng, who was waiting for Ten to answer.But he couldn’t. What was there to say?
Relationships: Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Comments: 19
Kudos: 162





	Portraits

**Author's Note:**

> For my angel @Silk_lines on twitter! I know this fic is a weird one but I really hope you enjoy it honey! xo

It was never a surprise to wake up and find the latest of the boys had been removed from the mansion grounds, his room stripped bare of the pretty silks, the candles extinguished, nothing but the faint scent of smoke and perfume lingering in the cold light of the morning.

It was never a surprise, but each time somehow hurt more than the last.

Each empty room was another hollow bone in Ten’s chest – a rib fragile and so easy to shatter, exposing his heart to the vicious, needful world outside. He carried each empty bed like a ghost, a lost friend, or a stranger never to be known.

Sicheng wasn’t the first to go. He wouldn’t be the last. Another notch on the Duke’s bedpost, another pretty face to immortalise in a painting hung in a room no one was permitted to visit. Not even Ten, as beloved, as valued as he was. Not even he could gaze upon the portraits of the Duke’s past lovers.

It was times like these he was glad of that rule. As he opened the window and aired out the room, rearranging the pillows for the next guest, he wondered who had fluffed the pillows as Ten’s portrait was shifted from the Duke’s private study to the forbidden room. Another hollow rib, another ghost amongst ghosts, his face possessed by someone else. Not even he held the authority to gaze upon himself.

-

Sicheng hadn’t been the most outrageous of the boys. He hadn’t been cruel or callous. He had been quiet. Subdued, even. Not prudish or shy, but simply calm. There were times of nervousness, of course, but he had never behaved as the others. Ten had tried to be stubborn, to be so loud that without his voice the manor would echo with painful silence. It hadn’t worked, and it proved a sore win to find out with each empty room that no other technique seemed to work either. No boy had a voice loud enough to fill the Duke’s heart.

But Sicheng, not unkind or cruel, had left early. Ten couldn’t understand it. Even the ones that threw expensive vases and hurled insults like barbed belts had lasted at least a year, until the Duke tired of the games and found someone more interesting. Even the worst temperaments had lasted more than two seasons, and yet Sicheng had arrived in the winter and by the middle of the summer he was gone, his room empty, Ten opening the shutters and fluffing the pillows as he always did when they left. Only this time, he was half a year early.

He hadn’t known Sicheng well.

The loud ones were easier to understand, to pity, but Sicheng’s beautiful, neutral façade had been difficult to approach. Maybe that was it. Maybe he had appeared too cold even for the Duke’s hot-blooded hands.

“Visit him,” the Duke said one evening. Ten was at his feet, organising his many papers while the newest boy, early twenties at the eldest, sat on his knee and kicked Ten’s shoulder every time he swung his legs.

Ten merely looked up. “Who, Sir?”

“Sicheng,” the Duke said, stroking a hand down Ten’s cheek absentmindedly, uncaring that it made his boy scowl. “I could tell you were always fond of him. Take tomorrow off. See for yourself that I have not left him in squalor like you assume.”

Ten paled. “Sir, I wouldn’t…”

The Duke smiled, eyes returning to his book. “I know,” he said. His voice was warm, warmer than the lit fire, warmer than the kindling jealousy in the boy’s eyes as he kicked harder at Ten. “I know you, Ten. Visit him, and let your exhausted mind have a moment to rest. You work too hard.”

“I do my job,” he said, not quite denial. He wouldn’t dare do that. Even now, years later, he would never argue with the Duke.

“You do your job indeed,” the Duke said. “You do it very well. You will do this well too, Ten. I am telling you to.”

Ten looked back at the papers in his hands. Some were accusations, some were pleas. The Duke never read them unless Ten had them neatly filed, the good and the bad. The ones worth reading, and the ones destined for the fire. Ten held so much trust in his hands, the scant few papers between his fingertips heavy with responsibility. Who had done the filing before Ten had taken up the job? Where was he now? Was he a portrait on the wall too, or was he faceless, another member of staff too old to be pretty enough for the Duke’s wandering eyes?

When Ten had awoken that morning, there had been fresh, faint lines around his eyes. He wondered, detached, how long he had left before he too was destined for the fire.

-

Sicheng’s apartment building was not sat in squalor, but it was not stately. It was not the miniature palace that the other boys had been gifted upon their gentle ousting. The building was high and old, one of the original buildings of the lingering city. The stairs were cracked marble, the apartments two to a floor, vaulted ceilings and claustrophobic widths, peeling wallpaper and rotting shutters.

It stank of faded splendour. The air was thick with dust and memories, old linen decaying on old shelves, the sickly-sweet death of old shrubs unwatered for years, stale perfumed uncorked and left sitting on glass tables to bubble and sour in the endless cycle of heady afternoon suns.

Sicheng opened the door on the fourth floor after a long moment of what must have been peering at Ten through the peephole. Ten counted three different locks unbolting before Sicheng stood before him in pretty, second-hand clothes, barefoot and expressionless.

He looked as beautiful as he always had. Maybe a little thinner, maybe a little happier.

“Ten,” he said. “Can I help you?”

Now that Ten had seen Sicheng, he wished he hadn’t. There he stood, unharmed. His living situation wasn’t ideal, but it was still a damn sight better than what he and Ten had come from. It was better than most people in the city would ever come to know. The apartment, as tall but small as it was, had probably held the greatest of gatherings, the most prestigious of guests.

Now it held Sicheng.

Sicheng, who was waiting for Ten to answer.

But he couldn’t. What was there to say?

Sicheng peered behind Ten, and upon finding the hallway empty, opened his door slightly wider. His fingers on the frame were slender but callused. He had been doing something arduous with his time. “Come in,” he said. “I’ll make you some tea.”

-

The door led into what could be called the kitchen, as tight as it was. Through a narrow hall there were doors which they quickly passed, likely a bedroom and a bathroom, and then Ten was in the heart of the apartment. The chaise was old velvet, rubbed to raw fibre in places, but comfortable when he sat. The chair opposite, imposing and leather, was cracked with age. Nothing in the building appeared new other than Sicheng, who moved around in the kitchen with all the ease of someone that knew the bones of the place. He brought Ten a steaming cup, chipped at the edges but the liquid inside pleasantly scented.

“It’s jasmine,” Sicheng said, folding himself into the cracked leather.

“Thank you,” Ten said, staring down at the cup. He rubbed a fingertip over the chip, but the edges of the porcelain weren’t sharp, dulled with wear and age.

“Your scar looks irritated,” Sicheng said.

Ten almost crushed the cup in his hands. “It’s fine,” he said, still staring at the jasmine tea.

“It doesn’t look fine.”

“It’s not the scar, it’s the skin beneath,” Ten found himself saying. “Especially in dry weather like this.”

Sicheng hummed. “That makes sense. Nothing maintains health if it’s locked away in the dark. The light must be jarring.”

There was a time when Ten would have thrown his pretty smelling tea into Sicheng’s face and then ground the shards of shattered porcelain into his skin.

There was none of that now, no point to it all. He had nothing to defend, nothing to preserve. Why would he? They were equals, in a way. Both forgotten toys living in the shadows of a newer model.

“Would you like to play chess?” Sicheng asked. “I have a set in my bedroom, I could bring it out. I’m very good at it. ”

“No,” Ten said. “Thank you, but no.”

Sicheng hummed again. He picked up his own tea and sipped, watching Ten calmly. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here?”

“He sent me.”

“That’s not the entirety of it though, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then tell me why you came here, Ten.”

They had never been friends, or enemies, or anything in between. They were strangers in the manor, and nothing more. The closest they had been was when Ten had cleared the remains of Sicheng’s presence out of his empty room.

“You left,” Ten said. He sipped his tea to be polite, but found the taste odd. He was used to black coffee now, a cup every hour or so to keep daydreams at bay. They were so unpleasant these days, full of knives and mould and decay. “I wondered why you left so early.”

“I was sent away,” Sicheng said without hesitation. “Weren’t we all? Other than you.”

Ten flinched. “That isn’t what I mean,” he said. “You left early.”

“What is it you want me to tell you? That I wasn’t to his liking? That he fucked like a dog in heat and I couldn’t hide my distaste for it? That he smelt like cigars and the cloying smoke of it put me off my dinner? It’s all true.”

“He’s kept boys for worse offences than not reciprocating his adoration,” Ten said.

Sicheng cocked his head slowly. “You?”

“Not just me.”

“But it started with you,” Sicheng said. In his old leather armchair, with the afternoon sun warm behind him, kissing the gold of his skin and burning it a deeper, richer hue, his dark hair and catlike eyes, he looked beautiful enough to envy. Ten did, in a way. He envied, and beneath that, he yearned. For the beauty, the old chair, the apartment of his own, the space to steep jasmine tea and keep a chess set in his bedroom. “It all started with you, Ten. Why are you asking me questions? You made the rules. You know them better than any of us.”

Ten stood abruptly, stomach rolling. He did not like the direction of the conversation. “I should go.”

Sicheng didn’t move. “Go then,” he said. “But come back.”

Ten’s eyes were burning for some unnamed reason. “Why?”

“Because I can tell you have more questions. If you come back soon, maybe you’ll figure out what it is you need to ask.”

Sicheng made no move to get up, to object to Ten’s sudden exit, or to see him to the door. He stayed in his chair, long, slender legs tucked beneath him, his shirt too open, his lips too perfect.

Ten left. He closed the door behind him, the sound of his boots echoing around him as he ran down the marble stairs and back towards the upper district, where the Duke’s manor lay surrounded by fake trees and high walls.

-

“Ah,” the Duke said as Ten was allowed in by the guards. He was passing through the main hall, a book in one hand, a glass of brandy in the other. “Ten, there you are. How was the visit?”

“Fine.”

The Duke frowned. “Ten,” he said, warning.

Ten lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said to the floor. “It was fine, Sir.”

The Duke lifted Ten’s chin and kissed his forehead. “Good,” he said, warm once more. “Are you feeling better? You look pale. Your… cheek is discoloured.”

Ten swallowed. “I am tired, Sir,” he said. “May I retire early?”

“Of course,” the Duke said. “Take care. Massage those oils into your skin. You need to remember like the doctor told you to. You need to take care of yourself for me.”

“Yes, Sir,” Ten said. The boy was at the top of the stairs, glaring down at the hand on Ten’s chin.

The Duke followed Ten’s line of sight and laughed when he saw his companion. “Possessive, isn’t he? This one’s the most like you, I think,” he said. “What a breath of fresh air.”

Nothing in the manor felt like fresh air. The air was fresher in Sicheng’s apartment, coated in dust as it was. “Fresh?” Ten asked without thinking. “After Sicheng?”

The Duke made a noise in his throat and pulled away. “You have no idea,” he said, shaking his head. “He had no interest in _anything;_ it simply wouldn’t have lasted. It couldn’t have.” He smiled at Ten, stroking one finger against Ten’s unmarred cheek. “You know I like my companions to have some spirit.”

-

“If you’re no longer fond of the boys, why keep their portrait?” Ten asked one evening, spirit closer to the surface than usual.

The Duke didn’t look up from his maps. “It’s a nice reminder of what once was,” he said. “A room full of pleasant memories.”

“But they weren’t all pleasant memories,” Ten said, the words hard. “What about Sicheng? You have nothing good to say about him.”

The Duke sighed. “You are simply obsessed, Ten,” he said, chiding. “Sicheng wasn’t _terrible_. He simply wasn’t right for someone like me, and we both realised it quite quickly. That does not mean there were no good memories, nor does it mean I found him unpleasant. He was gorgeous in a way few were, and even in the worst moments between us, I found myself enchanted by that alone. I was lucky to have him while I did, and I treasure the little that we had. He is not a man that will let himself be had by many.”

But Ten was not stuck on the intricacies of Sicheng’s beauty. He was stuck on something else, something that niggled, something still hidden. “Did you play chess?” he asked.

The Duke scoffed. “Once. He was bad at it, and quickly lost any interest once his patience wore thin. I doubt he even knew the names of the pieces, and I had no desire to teach him.”

-

Ten had been a dancer once. He still performed frequently, but for an audience of one, uninspired and bemused. He should have known that pretty cages were almost as terrible as the ugly ones. What did it matter if the bars shimmered?

Ten thought about it as he walked to Sicheng’s apartment. The streets were empty, only the odd civilian standing around smoking or trading change for fresh vegetables stolen from the nearby markets. Most of the buildings were boarded up, too old for the rich, to imposing for the poor. In apartments buildings meant to house thousands, Ten would have been surprised to find out that Sicheng had more than thirty neighbours.

He unlocked the door more speedily this time, as though he had been waiting for Ten’s unannounced arrival. His hair was tucked behind his ear, his eyes bright. His gaze wasn’t something Ten saw in the boys that littered the mansion, mulish or pitying as they stared at him. It was something else. Something he couldn’t name.

“Ten,” Sicheng said. He smiled; the apples of his cheeks tinged with bloomy pink. “What a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?”

“I came to play chess,” Ten said.

Sicheng nodded, opening the door a little wider. “Come inside,” he said. “I’ll make us some tea and fetch the board.”

-

Over the afternoon they played five games. Ten won the first two, then lost the three that followed.

The tea was lovely, Sicheng’s company pleasant.

“You are good,” Ten said after the last game, giving up his attempts to snatch a final win.

Sicheng hummed. “My mother taught me when I was a child. It’s more about adapting to the opponent than creating your own strategy. I learnt from the first games how you prefer to move across the board.”

“The Duke said you could not play.”

Sicheng looked up. For a face so serene, a voice so low, a man so tall, his eyes were incredibly soft. Jarring, almost, to gaze upon the face of a statue and see the living eyes of an angel. “What he did not know about me he could not possess,” he said quietly.

It was an interesting thought. An interesting stance to take. If Ten had thought of it, perhaps he would still be dancing for his own enjoyment, instead of recycling routine after routine for the same wandering gaze.

“And me?” he asked Sicheng. “You don’t worry that I will possess it?”

Sicheng seemed to think about it for a moment. “No,” he settled on finally. “I don’t think you will. You know better than any of us how it feels to be stripped bare of yourself. You would not strip another.”

“You sound confident,” Ten said, agitated. He picked at the hem of his trousers, envying the ease in which Sicheng slouched in his cracked leather chair, unbothered by his waning posture, no one at home to hit him between the shoulder blades and hiss to correct his slouch. “Why are you so confident? We were never friends. We barely spoke.”

“To each other, no,” Sicheng agreed. “But we spoke to others.” He picked a sweet out of a small glass pot, passing it to Ten. “It’s strawberry rose. A girl at the market sells these to pay for her sibling’s shoes. I like them a great deal.”

Ten ate the sweet. It was hard, a solid lump of syrup with only the faintest taste of something that wasn’t sugar. It was nice. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He placed one on his tongue, then offered Ten a small smile. “I’m curious. Will you answer a question of mine?”

Ten had truly little left to hide. “Alright.”

“How did you get the scar on your cheek?”

The sweet took a sour taste. “A boy,” he said. “Jealous of me.”

“Jealous of you?”

“Of my lingering presence,” Ten said. He could still see it, the boy barely twenty, sobbing, demanding to know why he wasn’t enough, why none of them were enough. It wasn’t a question Ten knew how to answer. He hadn’t been enough either. “He couldn’t understand why I was still employed as a servant when the Duke had stopped courting me.”

“I was curious too,” Sicheng said. “When I first entered the manor. Before we arrive, we all hear tales of you. The first one of us to be coveted by the Duke, the first of the treasures he hoarded. We all wondered why he kept you.”

“Wondered?” Ten asked, uncomfortable. “You sound as though you have found the answer.”

“I have,” Sicheng said. “I have seen you for myself. How could he ever let you go?”

-

He felt alone in his bed that evening, for the first time in years unhappy to turn over and find the sheets beside him cold.

There was laughter downstairs, the faint sound of music from the Duke’s newest phonograph. His latest party in the honour of his most recent companion. The Duke had invited Ten to attend, but he had politely refused. He didn’t fancy another scar to match the one he already had, and this boy was proving much more possessive than the others.

Not that he wanted to attend anyway. He would have rather stayed with Sicheng, losing at chess, drinking tea, eating sugar drop sweets from a paper bag.

There was a knock on the door, a barely there pause before it swung open and the Duke wandered in, folding himself down onto Ten’s mattress, pressing his face into the skin of Ten’s bare neck. “I miss you,” he whispered. “I miss what we had. I miss it so dearly, Ten.”

Ten put a hand on the back of the Duke’s hair and stroked comfortingly. “You have drunk too much wine, Sir,” he said quietly.

The Duke nodded, but he did not lift his head.

“Go back to your party,” Ten said. “See to your guests and your companion. I’m sure he is wondering where you are.”

The Duke lifted his hand, stroking Ten’s scar gently. It was sudden, surprising enough for Ten to stiffen, tensing at the contact. The scar was never touched. It was barely ever glanced at, and when it was, its sight filled the Duke’s gaze with sadness and disgust. “Ten,” he said quietly. “My Ten. Perhaps it would have been better for both of us if I had sent you away. Perhaps… I should have killed you. That would have ended the suffering, wouldn’t it, darling? But I couldn’t. I could never hurt you. I could never send you away.”

He put his cold hand atop of the Duke’s, pulling it away from his face with all the softness he could muster past the bile of fury in his throat. “Sir,” he said. “You must go back to your party."

The Duke nodded once more. This time, he pulled away. “I could never send you away,” he said, gentle as a lamb. “And you could never leave. It’s too late for that now. We’ll both rot here.”

He left Ten, and somehow, the sheets felt colder with his body heat than they had when Ten had been alone.

He lay back and stared up at the dark ceiling, and wondered what the other boys were doing, the ones that had left. The ones that had been sent away into their tiny palaces to be waited upon until their beauty wore thin. How long would it take? Would they wait for it to happen, or move somewhere, find something else?

He thought of an empty theatre, an open stage.

If the bars weren’t so thick, he would slip through them. If he were to leave, he would find a stage. Just once, it would be nice to perform for no one but himself.

-

Sicheng wasn’t trying to hide himself, which is what made it all the more aggravating to Ten when he couldn’t figure him out.

He visited, repeatedly. He found himself growing reckless, slipping out of the manor at all hours to sit with Sicheng, the aromatic tea, the rose sweets, and the old chess board. It felt wrong, like he was breaking rules. He wasn’t, but it felt so. The Duke no longer cared where Ten found himself, as long as he was back in time to perform his duties, and yet Ten lingered with Sicheng, staring at him at all hours, examining the way the morning light made him glow, the afternoon sun setting him ablaze, the evening sky transforming him into a luminescent pearl.

He was quiet, but his company was sound.

Peaceful.

That was how Ten felt.

At peace.

“Why did you go?” Sicheng asked one night. It had gotten late, and he worried about Ten walking back through the city, so they had agreed he would stay on the velvet chaise. Somehow they had ended up in the small bedroom anyway, both fully clothed atop the covers. Ten couldn’t stop staring at the point of Sicheng’s ear. It was endearing in a way not many things were, like his shy smile, the roundness of his cheeks when he laughed. Not many things endeared Ten, but he was finding out that most of them were related to Sicheng in some way.

“Why did I go where?” Ten murmured, still staring at Sicheng’s ear. He could still taste rose and strawberry sugar. He wondered if Sicheng tasted of it too.

“To the manor. What lured you to the Duke?”

Ten didn’t want to think of the Duke and his fatalistic mind, his desperate eyes. For a moment he considered lying, but there would be no point. If Sicheng didn’t like the truth of it all, that would be his choice, his decision. He had been right when he had said Ten would not strip another. The pain of a choiceless life was mystifying and endless. “I learnt to perform early,” he said. “I worked in a small theatre, and he watched a performance while passing through my town. He asked to court me, and of course I said yes. I thought I could make him love me, take care of me, treat me like a god. I thought I was smarter than he was, and that I could use him too.”

Sicheng turned to Ten, cheeks warming when he realised that Ten had been staring at him the entire time. “What changed?”

“I grew too dependent,” Ten admitted. “As these things tend to go. If she wanted to, could Cinderella ever leave her Prince Charming? He fell out of love but begged me to stay. Where else could I go? Almost ten years had passed, and I knew no one, I had nothing. I either stayed or I left and leaving was scarier to me than staying.”

“I see,” Sicheng said. “Did it not hurt? To be replaced so obviously, so frequently?”

“It hurt,” Ten admitted. “It always hurts. I was not special as I had thought. And these boys – they are all so naïve, just as I was. They never listened when I warned them to leave with their pockets full of gold and their heads full of lies. They never listened.”

“You didn’t say anything to me.”

“I stopped,” Ten said. He lifted a hand to his own face, the smooth scar. “It stopped with this. I realised that they weren’t taking it as a warning, they were taking it as a threat. They thought I was warning them away, and that when they didn’t listen I convinced the Duke to grow tired of them and send them away. I was wasting my breath. They would never listen to the boy too reliant to leave. I was a failure to them, an example of what not to be. A boy that grew in to a weak, pathetic man.”

There was silence for a moment.

“That is not what they think,” Sicheng said quietly. “Most of them revere you. Everyone has heard of your beauty, your charisma. Even now, people walk away from the manor with stars in their eyes. Even now, you are more beautiful than anyone else that hangs from his arm. You scare them, Ten. They fear that if you smile, genuinely happy once more, the Duke will fall back into your arms. He is clinging on, waiting for the moment you open your arms to him again.”

Funny how he hadn’t cried for years, but at that his eyes stung. Was it Sicheng? Or the implication that as his joy had faded so had his beauty, instead of the other way around?

“There is no point in fearing such a thing,” Ten said. “I am quite settled in numbness now. Happiness seems very far away.”

Sicheng put a hand against Ten’s cheek. His palm was warm, the end of his fingertips cold. “When I feel my worst, I find a hot bath helps me to feel happiness again. Would you like a bath, Ten?”

He laughed, found the sensation of it odd and unfamiliar. How long had it been? “I think it might be too late for a bath, Sicheng.”

“It is never too late,” Sicheng said solemnly. “I will join you if you’d like the company. It might help.”

If a bath could solve his problems, he would have realised by now. But once again, Ten found himself beguiled by Sicheng’s calm angel eyes. “Alright,” he said. “We can share a bath.”

-

The bath was an old clawed tub, and once filled it seemed almost impossibly deep, a leftover luxury from when the apartment was first occupied. Sicheng filled it high, adding scented oils to the water and stirring it with his long arm, the sleeve rolled up to his elbow. He was so impossibly gorgeous, that for the firs time in years, Ten felt a slight pity for the Duke. If only he had given Sicheng longer to open himself, he might have lasted the longest of them all.

_I have seen you for myself. How could he ever let you go?_

Ten was beginning to understand the sentiment.

Sicheng was not widely understood, but that made it all the more precious for the chosen few that came to know him. Beneath his golden skin and gentle eyes his humour was quick, not acerbic but playful. He was intelligent, graceful, and soft. He murmured about wanting animals to care for, a place to truly stretch his legs and run free. Somewhere with grass and blue skies not blocked by towering buildings left to crumble.

It wasn’t until they were both in the bath, facing one another, their knees high to their chests that Sicheng spoke through the steam. “I dance too.”

Another mystery solved. His lithe body, slender, toned legs. The way he curled his wrists and fingers during mundane tasks such as steeping the tea and folding fresh towels made sense. The calluses that mirrored Ten’s own. “The Duke doesn’t know,” Ten said, more of a statement than a question.

Sicheng shook his head. “It is not something I wished to share with him.”

Every answer brought up more questions. “Why did you stay with the Duke? You don’t seem to feel anything for him at all. Not now, not ever.”

“I did not travel to the city, to the manor, for the Duke,” Sicheng said. “I came for you.”

Anywhere else and the words would have shocked Ten. As it were, in the small, tiled bathroom, the steam heavy with fragrant oils that Ten couldn’t help but breathe into his body, Sicheng’s shins pressed against his own under the hot water, he couldn’t feel anything but comfort. “Why?”

“Curiosity,” Sicheng said. He lifted his hand from the water, leaning over to rub a smudge of dirt from Ten’s bare shoulder. “I don’t think you realise how famous your affair became. Thousands of people would pay just to catch a glimpse of the man that seduced the Duke so entirely. I would have been one of those people too if I’d had the funds, but I didn’t have any money. I had friends, and I had my body. That is what I had, and it is what I used. I saw you perform once, as a child. I forgot the details of your face, but I could never forget the impression you left on me.”

“What a disappointment I must be,” Ten said thickly.

Sicheng looked up from Ten’s shoulder, his eyes big and genuine. “Not at all,” he said. “I found you better than I imagined. More beautiful, more clever, more charming. Sadder, too. You walk the manor like a ghost. I think the Duke is grieving for you, in a way. He hoards his boys because the man he wants is there in body, though his spirit has long since left.”

“Where is his spirit?”

Sicheng lifted his hand again, placing it over Ten’s heart. “Hiding,” he said. “From the people that would trap it, cage it, bare it.” He looked up again and smiled, hesitant. “I hope he knows that his spirit is safe with me. People born with nothing understand the value of something when they find it.”

 _“It_ being my spirit?”

“No,” Sicheng said. _“It_ being hope.”

-

“You were gone all night,” the Duke said, agitated as he mulled over his breakfast.

Ten hummed from the doorway. “I could not sleep, Sir.”

“Where did you stay?”

“Nowhere,” Ten said. “I wandered the safer streets until dawn.”

The Duke looked up, his eyes dark. “Are you telling me the truth, Ten?”

“Yes, Sir,” he said, holding eye contact.

Eventually the Duke nodded, going back to his eggs.

-

He packed his bag as quickly and quietly as he could. His heart was in his throat the entire time, a faint sweat across his forehead. If he were caught now, it would mean death. It would mean worse. It would mean Sicheng waiting in the doorway of his apartment with his bags at his feet, waiting for someone that would never come.

“Why live in this apartment?” Ten had asked just before he’d left with the rising sun.

Sicheng had smiled, another veiled, secretive expression. “I was too uncomfortable with the splendour of the apartment that the Duke offered me,” he said. “So he gave me this one and offered me the money to send back to my family. I took it, of course, but the people he met before whisking me away weren’t family.”

“Who were they?”

“My friends. They’re waiting for us.”

“Us?”

“Us,” Sicheng said, solid. “Whenever you’re ready.”

It had been years since Ten had cried, but he allowed himself the weakness in that brief moment. “He will not let me go.”

Sicheng embraced him, so young but so sturdy. He put his head against Ten’s shoulder, hands tight around his waist. “You’re right,” he said. “He won’t let you go, you’re the only one he refuses to part with. You’d have to run away.”

Ten trembled. “I’m scared,” he admitted. “Sicheng, I’m scared.”

Sicheng’s embrace tightened. “I am too,” he whispered. “But I can’t leave you here like this. If you stay, I stay. If you want to go, I will help you.”

“Where?”

“There are cities out of his reach, distant coasts, far away mountains. Wherever you like, we can go.” Sicheng kissed his neck, soft and chaste. “The Duke is living his life to please himself. I think it is time that you do yourself the same honour, Ten.”

“Why? Why do this for me?”

Sicheng’s eyes were like honey. “A boy sat in the dirt watching the most beautiful man he has ever seen leap across a wooden stage has more impact than you could ever know. Sometimes you find a purpose, sometimes you lose one. Sometimes your purpose is to help someone else, and sometimes it is to let yourself be helped. The music box I had as a child always made me terribly sad. I wanted the ballerina to be free. It must be exhausting to dance endlessly to the same song, stuck spinning in the same box.”

-

The portrait room was unlocked. Though it was forbidden, the Duke had always been confident enough in his authority to leave the door unlatched. Ten had been too hurt at the thought of all those beautiful ghosts to ever enter. He lived as a spurned mistress, too pitied to be abandoned, too disappointing to be loved as he was.

Until tonight.

He’d been twenty when he’d sat for his portrait. Young and in love, despite his best efforts. The Duke had always been charming and benevolent, handsome and imposing. Things between them had faded because he had expected that once caged, Ten would have stayed the same too.

How long had it been? Almost ten years.

He barely recognised himself. In his painting he looked so… bright. He glowed. He could see now, what was missing from his reflection when he stared at himself in the mirror. It was not the scar or the lines around the eyes that made him appear less, but what lay beneath the skin. Years of numbness had leeched the colour from Ten’s skin, the warmth from his eyes.

There was so much of the world that the boy in this portrait would never see. He would never perform on another small wooden stage in a village theatre. He would never tread on beaches of hot sand. He would never leave this manor.

But Ten could make sure that he would never leave this room.

He pulled out his knife and carefully traced around the edges of the canvas. He pulled the painting from its frame, and when he was done, he walked the room, searching the portraits for a glimpse of Sicheng. Once found, Ten couldn’t help but laugh.

The boy in the portrait was not Sicheng. Not the Sicheng he knew, anyway. He was a guise, a polite, cold exterior. He might as well have been a statue. This Sicheng would not risk his fortune, his happiness, his life, for someone like Ten. This Sicheng would not even talk to Ten, walking past him in the halls of the manor with his eyes straight ahead, silent at the dinner table while the Duke tried to make conversation.

The Duke deserved to mourn neither of them. Ten cut Sicheng’s portrait from the canvas too, and just before he slipped from the manor’s doors, he threw both paintings into the fire warming the kitchens.

Just as he unlocked the gate, he heard footsteps. He tensed, knife still in his left hand, heart thudding. He didn’t know how to use it, but he would if he had to.

“You’re leaving?”

Ten turned. It was the latest boy, wrapped in his silks, uncomfortable with the chill of the late evening. He truly was beautiful, but they all were. It was never enough. “Yes,” he said. “Are you going to stop me?”

The boy snorted. “Stop you? Why would I stop you? I’ve wanted you gone for months.” He smirked. “I never thought you’d have the balls to go.”

Ten found himself laughing. “I didn’t either.”

“I’ll distract him,” the boy said. “He upset me over dinner, so he’ll be making it up to me for a day at least. It will keep him busy and allow you time to get as far away from the city as you can.”

Ten nodded, lips pressed together. “Don’t make the same mistakes as me,” he said quietly. “Don’t keep trying to make him happy. It doesn’t work, it just makes you more miserable.”

The boy laughed, high and childish. “You think I care if he’s happy? You really are the stupid wretch I thought you were.” His smile grew. “The bastard took the money from my mother’s land and left her with nothing, and he doesn’t even know about it. The information is probably at the bottom of a pile of ash, burnt with the rest of his uninteresting letters. I’m going to take everything I can and destroy the rest. That’s not a problem, is it?”

Ten thought of the tens of boys in apartments already bought, already signed with their names. Boys set for life, whether the Duke lived or not. He thought of the years he had wasted, placating, drifting, only to be awakened by one of the beautiful faces he had scorned. “No,” he said. “That’s no problem to me. Just make sure the other boys get their portraits. They deserve that much.”

“The paintings aren’t pieces of their souls, you know.”

“I know,” Ten said. “But they’re something of us that the Duke owns. Take it from him.”

The boy smiled prettily. “When you put it like that,” he said. “I think I will.”

-

Sicheng was not in his apartment doorway. He was outside of the building, talking in a low voice to two companions, both of whom were settling horses that were linked to a small carriage.

He caught sight of Ten and smiled, so clearly relieved. “You came.”

Ten pulled him into a kiss before he could stop himself. “I came,” he said. “And we need to go. Now.”

Sicheng nodded. He paused, lips parting before leaning back down to kiss Ten again, tender and warm. So warm. “I brought the chess set for the journey.”

Ten laughed, painfully endeared. “Why?”

“Trying to win will distract you from your fear.” Sicheng looked up and gestured to his companions. “This is Yukhei and Dejun. The others are waiting for us outside of the city.”

“The others?” Ten asked, overwhelmed.

“My friends,” Sicheng said. “Their pockets full of the Duke’s money. Kun got ahead of himself and purchased a ship, but from my understanding we still have money for a house. The ship will at least help us find one.”

“Us?”

Sicheng ran a slender, callused finger down Ten’s scarred cheek. “It’s time to find your joy. The world is waiting for you.”

Ten put his hand atop Sicheng’s. “For us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!! Kudos/bookmarks/comments always welcome, and if you want to you can find me @mntsnflrs on twitter! I am bad with technology though so please be patient haha
> 
> Sending love to everyone! xo


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